Documents Add Detail to Fox Hosts’ Desire to Help Trump

Jeanine Pirro. Jesse Watters. Maria Bartiromo. They seemed to have different motivations, but the same goal: Help President Trump.

Several of Fox News’s most prominent on-air news personalities made clear their desire to help Mr. Trump shortly before and after the 2020 presidential election, according to a tranche of court documents released on Tuesday in a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox Corporation filed by Smartmatic, a voting technology company.

In one text message, Mr. Watters, who now hosts “Jesse Watters Primetime” on Fox News, said to his colleague Greg Gutfeld: “Think about how incredible our ratings would be if Fox went ALL in on STOP THE STEAL,” a reference to the movement trying to overturn the results of the election.

Ms. Pirro, a former Fox News host who is now the U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., under President Trump, told Ronna McDaniel, then the Republican National Committee chair, in a text in the months before the election: “I work so hard for the President and party.” Ms. Pirro had been pushing for a pardon from Mr. Trump for her ex-husband, Smartmatic argues.